new rider

Welcome our latest recruit Addy Pope, who has recently moved back to Scotland after 10 years in exile (lets not ask, it sounds mysterious). A bit of an all rounder, this is his first proper season of cross so lets make him welcome, he plans to do as many of the SCX races as he can and head to the odd cross race in N England, beyond that, more road races, some mtb enduros and a couple of triathlons. 

Addy above the Skipton Alps

In his own words.

"Hi everyone, i nearly joined the VCM ranks a couple of years back but lost sight of what was important and fun.  But I have refocused and got myself sorted.  I met Andy W at uni many moons ago and marvelled at how clean his bike always was, this hasn't changed.  I rode with the EUCC boys while at uni and then moved south to South Wales to pursue my other love, Glaciers.  However, there don't seem to be any glaciers in Wales so I did a stint in the high Arctic.  Since then I have been working my way back to Scotland having lived in Skipton for a few years.  Somehow I never managed to get round to doing the 3 Peaks race, although I did support for a few people. 

I have biked pretty much my whole life, mainly mountain bikes but dabbled with the dark side of road bikes while in Yorkshire.  In a normal year I will try to get a couple of road sportives in, either the Fred Whitton or the Etap Du Dales and a few mtb marathons.  I also really enjoy 24hr races, but have yet to "go solo". Teams seem more fun and less painful. I try to head to the alps each year to ride, usually with Sam at BikeVillage and rode the TransProvence last year, an epic event but a bit prices (note - I was setting the course so saw none of the gourmet food and survived off pasta and sauce for a week sleeping in unheated caravans and carrying all our kit rather than having a cook, mechanic and porterage of all your clean clothes).  Arriving in Monaco in clothes that you had been riding in for 7 days was a bit of a shock for the locals..... Apparently we were not the kind of people they wanted lounging in the Casino gardens.

I have a wee blog(building it at present) and flickr site "